Thrive Leads Review (2023) PROS & CONS | Thrive Leads vs OptinMonster vs Convert Pro vs Sumo

Without a doubt, one of the most potentially effective marketing strategies today is still the use of email marketing. This is why in this Thrive Leads review I will be dissecting features of this powerful lead generation WordPress plugin.

Email is still a trusted tool that is widely used across the globe. For this reason, it’s vital to have an effective email marketing strategy. To use email effectively, you need a recipient on the other end of your email.

This is where it can get tricky. How can you build distribution lists to target the people you need to target? If you have a website or blog, you might have some traffic. But how do you turn that traffic into a list of leads? 

This is where a plugin like Thrive Leads comes into play. If you’re not familiar with it, Thrive Leads is a list-building plugin for WordPress. While it’s not the only one out there, it is one of the most useful and effective plugins of its type.

 

Thrive Leads Review  – What is Thrive Leads?

Thrive Leads is designed to integrate fully with WordPress. Through Thrive Leads you can design and implement various opt-in forms that can be displayed on your page in many ways. This plugin does more than collect email addresses.

 

 

Depending on your page and what sort of form you want, you can also categorize and sort your contacts, choose which kind of connection to market to and determine which to leave alone.

Thrive Leads comes with a multitude of features that take list building and bring it up to a whole new level. Thrive Leads comes with a ton of features, many of which you probably didn’t even know you need.

These features make Thrive Leads a necessary and integral part of any email marketing strategy. The only thing that Thrive Leads doesn’t do is create and send the emails for you.

 

Variety Of Optin Forms

Thrive Leads gives you the potential to create a variety of different opt-in forms. Do you want pop-ups? A sticky ribbon? Do you want something more or less intrusive?

Regardless of the type of site, you are building you can have a list-building feature that works for you and your viewers.

 

 

The types of opt-in forms are included with Thrive Leads:

• In-Line Form can be automatically inserted anywhere in your post using a simple code;
• 2-Step Opt-in Form works by adding buttons or links which then open a new box when clicked;
• Slide-Ins are designed to slide onto the screen from the corner at a certain point;
• Opt-In Widget can be added to any widget on your site with a few simple clicks;
• Screen Filler Overlays are specifically designed to cover the entire area of a screen so they can’t be ignored or clicked away;
• Content Locks hide the content on your page until a visitor signs up and opts in (this can also be done using content locker plugins);
• Scroll Mat appears at the top of the page and pushes the rest of the content down;
• Multiple Choice Forms engage visitors by offering them several choices in how they want to interact;
• PopUp Lightbox is a pop-up that appears over your content and grabs the viewer’s attention;
• Sticky Ribbons come in at the top of the screen and stay there, even as the visitor scrolls up or down the page.

 

Targetting

Thrive Leads has various targetting options to make sure that the most relevant opt-ins reach their intended viewers.

For example, you could set that someone viewing a page about one topic sees offers related to that content and isn’t presented with useless offers about an unrelated topic. By using targeting, you can increase the overall conversion rate by showing the right offers in front of the right eyes.

 

 

You can choose exactly which pages you want the optin form to appear on:

• Basic Settings – top-level selections, such as the homepage, search page, 404 error page, or all posts/pages.
• Posts – select specific posts on which to display the form.
• Categories – display the optin based on the category or tags.
• Pages – select specific pages on which to display the form.
• Post types – do you want your popup appearing on all posts, pages, or custom post types? For example, if you run an e-commerce store, you may want to display the popup on product pages.
• Page templates – some themes support a selection of page templates. If your theme is one that does, you can choose to display optins based on which page template a post is using.

If there are exceptions to the rule, you can single them out. You can also choose to save your settings as a template so they can be reused in the future.

 

Triggers

The trigger is the event which triggers the optin form to be displayed. You can choose from:

• Show on page load – Displays immediately
• Show after a certain period of time– Shows after a certain number of seconds (0 – 100seconds)
• Show when the user scrolls to a specific part of the content – Displays when the user reaches a defined Class or ID within the content
• Show when the user scrolls to a percentage of the way down the content – Displays when the user gets a certain way through the post (0% – 100%)
• Show when the user clicks an element
• Show when the user is about to exit the page (exit intent)
• Show when the user reaches the bottom of the page

Thrive Leads has two useful features which make the targeting even more powerful. Those are SmartExit and SmartExit+. SmartExit allows you to use exit intent for desktop users and timed display for mobile users.

SmartExit+ works on any of the three timed triggers (time, percentage or specific part). If a desktop user tries to exit before this trigger is reached, the optin will display as if exit intent was enabled.

 

 

To avoid overloading your visitors, you can configure how frequently the popups are displayed. You can set this anywhere between once every day and every 100 days.

You can also set it to zero which will show the popup on every visit. With Thrive Leads’ advanced trigger options, you can show an optin form at the right time when your visitor is likely to subscribe to your list.

 

A/B Testing

Have you ever created a questionnaire or other type of form and had to send it out without really knowing if it was right for the job? Or have you ever come up with various ideas, but were unable ever to figure out which ideas were the ones to go with?

With Thrive Leads, you don’t have to worry about this as it comes with an A/B testing feature. This feature lets you make multiple versions of the same form, and then track how these different forms perform.

 

 

As more data comes in, it’s easy to go back and see which forms are generating the most success. Then, all you have to do is quickly implement the most successful version of that form for your future visitors.

The plugin will determine the winner based on three criteria:

• A minimum number of conversions
• Minimum duration
• Chance to beat original 

One of Thrive Leads’ best features is the ability to put different types of forms against each other in split tests.

For example, rather than analyzing the impact of headline tweaks, you can test whether a popup form crushes the conversion rate of a slide-in.

 

Smartlink Feature

For many web visitors, there’s nothing more annoying than signing up for a website, only to get hounded by that same site to sign up again when they return. If the website is going to keep pestering them, then what’s the point in signing up in the first place?

Thrive Leads avoids this by using what it calls SmartLink. SmartLink is a link that you include in your emails when you send them out. Since it makes sense to assume that anyone receiving the email has already signed up, this link takes them to something different.

You can create pages explicitly meant for existing and returning visitors, with new offers or content that they wouldn’t see otherwise. You don’t even have to create an entirely new page for this feature.

When you use SmartLink, the visitor can come to the same page as everyone else but see content designed just for them.

 

Lead Magnet Creation

Another perk of using Thrive Leads is the ability to automate the use of lead magnets. Those are special incentives (usually content download) that you offer to new subscribers.

With the use of Thrive Leads, you can present new visitors with an offer, give them the ability to opt-in, and send them your unique content, all in an easy-to-use and automated plugin.

This lets you and your site welcome new members without having to worry about handling this aspect of the business yourself.

 

Reports

Thrive Leads excels in delivering timely, meaningful reports that give you the data and insights you need to make informed decisions for the future.

You can see exactly how well (or how poorly) certain forms are performing or find out where a majority of your traffic is coming from at various times. This sort of information makes it easy to get the most out of your website.

 

Connections

Before you can begin building an email list, you need to integrate an auto-responder service like SendGrid, MailChimp, etc. Without that, you have nowhere to store the email addresses collected.

 

 

Fortunately, Thrive Leads is compatible with an impressive 19 email marketing services.

 

How much does Thrive Leads cost?

Thrive Leads can be purchased as part of Thrive Suite membership. You pay $19 per month (billed annually) and get Thrive Leads and access to every single Thrive product:

• Thrive Theme Builder lets you visually design and edit whole site without having to hire somebody. For more info check Thrive Theme Builder review and comparison with Thrive Architect.
• Thrive Quiz Builder is WordPress quiz builder plugin that allows you to create quizzes with branching logic to increase engagement and segment your growing email list based on the results.
• Thrive Ovation is WordPress testimonial plugin that will save you time and hassle in finding the perfect user testimonials for your site.
• Clever Widgets can help in displaying different widget content in WordPress based on targeting rules, categories, and more in your widget areas.
• Thrive Ultimatum is WordPress plugin for scarcity marketing that will improve your conversions by using timer campaigns for evergreen marketing tools, perfect for scarcity marketing.
• Thrive Architect is a powerful drag and drop visual editor that lets you create content, forms, and pages and optimize them across resolutions and devices.
• Thrive Apprentice – Create pro-looking courses straight from your WordPress dashboard.
• Thrive Comments – Brings the addictive triggers of social media and a conversion focus to your WordPress comments, through several innovative features like upvoting and downvoting, gamified comment incentives and an impressive number of after-comment-actions.
• Thrive Landing Pages allows you to build and implement powerful landing pages on your site with any of the hundreds of templates available.
• Thrive Headline Optimizer lets you optimize automatic engagement winner, set-and-forget A/B testing for all headlines.

Thrive Suite comes with option to install the tools on up to 25 websites. If you need more, then you will need to buy Agency plan.

 

Thrive Leads vs. OptionMonster

Thrive Leads can be used only on a self-hosted WordPress site, while OptinMonster can be used on any website, even Shopify.

Both OptinMonster and Thrive Leads offer professionally designed conversion-focused templates. Thrive Leads uses front-end, drag and drop visual editor that works on the block-based model.

OptinMonster allows you to edit the different elements of the template and has a Canvas function if you want to design everything from scratch.

User targeting and triggers are more tailored to individuals based on their behavior on your site, while Thrive’s focus is more on a tailor-made experience unique to the site. For more detailed comparison between Thrive Leads and OptionMonster, check my post where I show what each offers.

 

Thrive Leads vs. Convert Pro

Thrive Leads and Convert Pro are very similar options. Both rely on front-end visual editors to build opt-in forms. All done A/B tests with Thrive Leads are easily found on their dedicated WordPress dashboard on your site.

Convert Pro requires setting up Google Analytics to oversee and access A/B test reports.

Thrive Leads does not allow scheduling start and end dates for opt-in forms, while Convert Pro does allow for such scheduling. Convert Pro allows users to customize opt-in forms for both desktop and mobile, but with Thrive Leads you can customize for desktop, mobile, and tablet.

For more detailed comparison between Thrive Leads and Convert Pro, check my post where I show what each plugin offers and what are the differences.

 

Thrive Leads vs. SUMO

While Thrive Leads pricing plans to include all features and only differ in on how many sites you can activate, Sumo has free and pro plan which varies in features they come with.

Sumo Basic is too limited in features to be competition to Thrive Leads, but Sumo PRO offers useful options.

Sumo works on a monthly fee which increases as traffic on your site increases. Thrive Leads is available to you after license purchase, regardless of site traffic or other factors.

For more detailed comparison between Thrive Leads and Sumo PRO, check my post where I show what each plugin offers.

 

Thrive Leads Review Conclusion

Thrive Leads is a fantastic feature rich plugin for WordPress that makes it easy to build high-performing opt-in forms. Considering how vital email is, a tool like this is a necessary part of any marketing campaign.

With Thrive Leads users to have many options when it comes to optin form types and ready-made templates. The form editing functionality comes with an impressive number of modules, letting you add eye-catching features to your forms.

The editor is a little daunting to use at first glance, but once you get to know how it works, you’ll realize it’s very well designed and intuitive to use. Plus it gives you complete control over every part of your forms down to the tiniest details.

To help maximize conversions, the plugin is equipped with robust A/B testing and targeting functionality to improve your conversion rates continuously. I highly recommend Thrive Leads for collecting emails on any WordPress website.